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Infertility

Our Infertility Support forum is a space to connect with others in the same position, discuss causes, treatment and IVF, and share infertility stories of hope and success.

Embryos all stalled at cell stage

3 replies

cat234 · 18/01/2023 08:23

Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience, or any suggestions.

We’ve had our first round of IVF and ICSI, mainly due to male factor/low sperm count, but also PCO. Has our day 5 update call yesterday and had bad news.

They collected 25 eggs last Thursday, 17 mature, 11 fertilised - so we were really hopeful. The plan was for a freeze all cycle due to OHSS risk, I understood why, but was really frustrated with it, but am glad now as we would have had a cancelled transfer anyway. Day 3 call was good, they froze one embryo that was grade 2, 8 cell. All the others were 6-8 cell embryos then, so some slightly slower, but some 8 cells.

But have progressed to blastocyst. They all seem to have got stuck at cell stage and not progressed. This means that whilst we have a day3 frozen embryo, they aren’t hopeful about chances of that being successful if transferred as it will likely get stuck at the same point.

Has anyone else had similar. They have said they will review the case and ring with an update about suggestions from here. It seems that it would be egg factors - quality etc, or sperm factor given this kicks in more from day 3 onwards. I don’t know what they do know to find out more about what caused it? Without changing something substantial it’s likely the same would happen again and don’t know what we can do/change given numbers collected and fertilised were good.

Felt so positive and hopeful that we would have something from that many fertilised eggs and feeling really despondent now.

OP posts:
user1471499959 · 08/05/2023 21:15

Hi, you’re not alone!! Did you ever get any answers? We’ve had the same thing happen twice, but I’ve managed to get pregnant four times naturally so they know we can make blastocysts. At the moment they’re recommending picsi instead of icsi and calcium ionophore but I feel like there’s more to it. Hope you’re doing ok!

thislittlebird · 09/05/2023 10:50

Day 3-5 issues usually indicate a sperm problem afaik. We had that happen on cycle 2 and realised it was because my husband had been sick with a fever the month before. Did a lot of prep and tests ahead of cycle 3 and this time all 9 that fertilised got to day 5, and 5 made it to blast. So in your case, it might be worth looking into sperm quality. Look into DNA fragmentation tests or see an andrologist, at the very least you can rule poor sperm dna quality out.

user1471499959 · 09/05/2023 13:56

Thank you! We have had a sperm fragmentation test that came back normal but maybe that was the fluke. I do think my husband was coming down with a virus around that time and I know I had one so the second one could have been to do with that! I will now Google ‘andrologist’!

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